by Joe Fielder
We spoke to Nick Ceglio of local indie rock act George Glass recently about the band's current Indie Go Go campaign to raise funds to release their first album -- and the making of a number of songs on it.
Here's Nick:
THE FUNDRAISER
To be honest, we kept going back and forth on the whole fundraiser thing. The idea of approaching friends & family, hat in hand, made us a little uncomfortable, especially at a time when everyone is struggling. Sometimes it still makes me feel a bit uneasy. We took pride in being self contained. But then we ran out of money and we started noticing these fundraiser campaigns were popping up more and more. We figured now would be the time to act before the whole fundraiser trend started to lose its appeal.
THE ALBUM
We tried things a little different with our new batch of songs (20 total). About half of them were conceived in the rehearsal room from top to bottom with the three of us contributing equally in the composition and arrangement of the music. We wanted not to take ourselves too seriously either. I've spent the past thirteen years writing songs with a certain seriousness that can sometimes be interpreted as glum and depressing. So topically, a decent amount of the new material is a bit tongue-in-cheek on purpose. As far as the recordings go, the four new songs we have up on our soundcloud page right now were recorded both at Bedrock Studios in Echo Park, and in a Northern California studio that used to be an old post office.
THE SONGS
1. "Aleph" -- The name comes from a short story I was reading at the time by Jorge Luis Borges. It's about a point in space that contains all other points and anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously. The narrator finds this point in his basement. Lyrically I thought it would be funny to take that point in space and move it out of a basement and into an empty music venue where some random bar band is playing a lackluster set to their girlfriends and the bartender.
2. "Patchwork Girl" -- I went to this dance recital with a friend of mine and I saw a female performer who was absolutely captivating. i became obsessed for a week or two. I never actually met her, so instead I just wrote a song about our imaginary first date where we sneak into the Hollywood Cemetery after hours and drink booze and hunt for the graves of old movie stars.
3. "Future Former" - This was one of the two songs we recorded at the old post office up in Boulder Creek. It was an awesome experience to leave town and spend the better part of an entire weekend doing nothing but drinking beer, eating in small-town diners and jamming. This song in particular is about the unstable art of sleeping with your friends. Yep.
4. "Side Effects" -- The other post office recording. The song is one of our mellower recordings. I'm really obsessed with the keyboards on this song. They remind me of the theme song from Taxi. It really shouldn't, because other than the tone, it doesn't really sound like the Taxi theme song at all. Regarding the song's lyrical content, it involves the death throes of a relationship and lots of cocaine. Just say no.
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